Thirty Years of Failed Presidential Leadership on Campus Rape

College administrators have known about the campus rape problem for three decades, and they have been mandated to address it for two decades, why has so little been done? The answer is failed presidential leadership.

Karen Barnett first documented the campus rape problem in her 1982 article “Date Rape” in Ms. magazine, and Ms. published another article on the same topic in 1985 featuring Dr. Mary Koss’ three-year study of over 7,000 students at 35 schools. Koss found that 1 in 4 college women faced rape or attempted rape during their time on campus—and not much has changed since then.

Schools have been mandated by law to address campus sexual assault for the past 20 years. The Clery Act of 1990 requires schools to accurately report their rape numbers, but campuses routinely underreport these figures. Schools were first mandated to provide support and accommodations to survivors in 1992 with passage of the Sexual Assault Victims’ Bill of Rights, but most schools still fall short. As a graduate student in the late 1990s in a leadership position in residence life, I can attest to the fact that campus administrators at national conferences I attended were well aware of the campus rape problem.

So why has so little been done by college administrators?

A recent survey of college and university presidents from Inside Higher Ed reveals that delusional presidents are the crux of the problem. Of all institutional players, college presidents have the most power to make change—through hiring decisions, policies, and day-to-day leadership. Despite reputable studies showing that 1 in 5 female students face sexual assault, only 1 in 3 college presidents agree with the statement, “sexual assault is prevalent on college campuses,” according to the new report. Furthermore, only 6 percent of college presidents agree that sexual assault is prevalent on their campuses, when plenty of evidence otherwise exists.

Seventy-seven percent say their schools are doing a “good job” addressing the problem, while only 4 percent were willing to admit that their school does not adequately protect students. The truth is that almost no schools expel rapists or take other basic measures to shift rape culture on their campuses due to perverse institutional incentives, such as concerns of being sued by perpetrators or financial and reputational loss from admitting there’s a problem.

We have seen evidence of this delusion thinking from college presidents who publicly deny the problem, take survivors to task for blowing the whistle, play upon rape myths of false reports and downplay the significance of campus rape:

At a press conference in October of 2013, University of Connecticut President Susan Herbst said that survivor complaints of the school’s mishandling sexual assault were “astonishingly misguided and demonstrably untrue” before settling with survivors for $1.3 million in 2014. She still denies that UConn ever had a problem.

In 2013, Occidental College President Jonathan Veitch scolded survivor activists who “actively sought to embarrass the college” (his words) when they shared concerns about the college’s handling of sexual assault cases with local media. The college settled with 10 survivors for a large sum in 2013, but President Veitch continues to deny that Oxy has ever had a problem, and even hired a team of discredited PR attorneys to write a report blaming survivor activists for problems on campus.

In July of 2014, Hobart and Smith William College President Mark D. Gearan sent a campus-wide letter stating saying that he was confident the college had not violated federal law after students filed a Title IX complaint citing egregious mishandling of sexual assault.

In August of 2014, University of Oregon President Michael Gottfredson stepped down after allegations surfaced that he allowed three basketball players accused of a gang rape to play during March Madness. President Gottfredson denied that he or the college mishandled the case, stating that local police requested the school not take action.

In November of 2014, Lincoln University President Robert R. Jenkins gave a speech at an all-female convocation about how false rape reports ruin men’s lives. He resigned two weeks later after his rape myth comments brought national scrutiny.

In November of 2014, Eckerd College President Donald Eastman III blamed survivors for campus rape in a campus-wide email with his suggestion that they drink less and engage in less casual sex.

Earlier this month, Grinnell College President Raynard Kington openly challenged survivor claims that the college had mishandled their sexual assault cases with the insinuation that the public would later discover “gaps” in their stories.

College presidents across the country insist that they “take this issue very seriously,” but as the Inside Higher Ed poll and this pantheon of failed presidential leadership show, most college and university presidents simply do not.

My advice to college presidents (not that any of them will actually listen since I’m one of those “rowdy” faculty members who just won’t behave like a “dutiful daughter”) is to:

Admit there’s a problem. If survivor activists are telling you have a problem, then you have a problem. See this activism as a gift, a wake-up call if you will, and gather data on the scope of the problem on your campus through an annual, representative student survey.

Apologize to survivors who have been traumatized on your campus under your watch. Apologize to survivors who have dropped out of or graduated from your institution who were traumatized on your campus.

Make real change by telling the truth about your numbers, establish an affirmative consent policy, institute an expulsion policy for students found responsible for sexual violence, mandate ongoing annual bystander training to shift rape culture, and invest in a dedicated Title IX officer and independent staff to oversee fair, professional adjudication processes. And please spare us the long list of superficial changes that college presidents are so fond of trotting out as evidence of progress when the basic pillars of prevention are not in place.

Maybe we need new presidents who know how to read data. Or maybe we need new presidents who actually respect faculty experts enough to trust their data. We certainly need new presidents who aren’t steeped in rape myths and victim-blaming, who will treat this like a public health crisis instead of a public relations crisis.

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The Los Angeles Times did not perform due diligence in their investigation of the numbers, and they never should have issued a retraction. Felch had incontrovertible evidence that the College did not include anonymous cases in their 2012 ASR and had verification that the college could not lawfully account for 27 missing cases.

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Much like the backlash of the 1980s and ’90s, today’s rape apologia comes in four distinct, but interconnected, forms: denying the problem exists, blaming the victim, vilifying whistleblowers and turning perpetrators into victims. Below, we outline the ways in which conservative backlashers are attempting to undermine the work of anti-rape activists—and, thankfully, how they’re failing.